The Japanese have come up with another novel way of committing suicide: getting lost in a forest and dying of exposure, starvation, or whatever other perils await you. The forest of choice is Aokigahara Forest, also called the Sea of Trees. Of course it’s crazy, but it’s so typically Japanese; I can’t see any other nationality coming up with something like this. Japan has a ridiculously high suicide rate (I’ve covered other crazy methods of suicide here before), and the rate’s gone up since the economy’s gone down, not that one caused the other, as any statistician will tell you!

Signs have been posted outside the forest to help deter the suicidal, and security cameras have been erected as well.

The goal, said Imasa Watanabe of the Yamanashi Prefectural Government is to track the people who walk into the forest. Watanabe fears more suicidal visitors will arrive in the coming weeks.

“Especially in March, the end of the fiscal year, more suicidal people will come here because of the bad economy,” he said. “It’s my dream to stop suicides in this forest, but to be honest, it would be difficult to prevent all the cases here.”

As a method of suicide, what do you think about it? At the very least, you’re not being inconsiderate by leaving a body for other people to sort out, and being considerate is all about what being Japanese is, yesno?

This is possibly one of the most bizarre things I’ve heard of, but apparently there’s a Poop museum in Himeji, Japan. The mueseum has displays of (questionably) tastefully arranged samples of poop from many different types of animal. There are books and diagrams that explain how poop is made, and even videos of poop in the making, for those of that discerning nature.

I’m not sure that this is my thing, really, but it does sound like the kind of exhibit that fellow Insanite Joseph might enjoy. Personally? I think the whole thing stinks.

Now I don’t know what kind of toxic system you need to have for this to happen, but apparently some guy in Kumamoto, Japan, managed to poison 54 other people around him just by vomiting. Allegedly, he drank copious amounts of pesticide, possibly in a suicide attempt. Either that, or he was hallucinting that his stomach was inhabited by insects. When the doctors started pumping his stomach, the pesticide came out with everthing else:

The spray of chloropicrin, a very dangerous pesticide, was so toxic it
cause 54 doctors, nurses, and patients to have breathing problems and
sores in their eyes, leaving them desperate for medical help.

This is, of course related to the detergent suicide story I posted a couple of weeks back. So can ANYONE give a reason why Japanese people are so willing to try strange methods of suicide? If you want to do suicide, do it right-drink furniture polish. Horrible death. Beautiful finish.

A 14 year-old girl in Tokyo committed suicide by mixing laudry detergent with cleanser, creating hydrogen sulphide fumes which killed her, and sickened at least 10 others in a neighboring apartment block. However, this isn’t the first detergent-related suicide to occur in Tokyo:

The girl’s suicide on Wednesday night was part of a rapidly expanding string of similar deaths that experts say have been encouraged by Internet suicide sites. A 31-year-old man outside Tokyo killed himself inside a car early on Thursday by mixing detergent and bath salts, police said.